Sunrise. A snort from the deer who sleeps under the crabapple tree. A hummingbird zips past the wild garlic.
sunrise
Sunrise pink fading to orange. The woods’-edge green grows more intense, and the birdsong more diverse.
Just enough upper-atmosphere haze to soften the sun from glare to glow. Today the hepaticas will open—I’m sure of it.
Sun climbing every tree at once. A hollow snag mutters like a stomach with its cargo of squirrels.
Sunrise. I watch the trees grow shadows and pelts of sunlight. Anyone rooted can become a gnomon: from the Greek, an expert or interpreter.
A ray of sun strikes the lilac, setting its yellow buds aglow. The sound of water gurgling under my yard. The back-and-forth of nuthatches.
Can daylight be saved? An hour late, I watch the sun assemble itself among the ridgetop trees one blazing shard at a time—a kind of kintsugi.
Sun in the tops of the pines. The sine curve of a pileated woodpecker’s flight path over the house. Her mad cackle after she lands.
Clear and cold. The scattered, jubilant cries of six swans—too few to form a chevron—passing high overhead, bellies pink with sunrise.
After yesterday’s melting, the snowpack is a maze of wrinkles. The ridge turns orange. A hundred robins appear in the yard.
Overcast at sunrise. The cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk beginning to think about courtship and nesting, somewhere up in the snowy woods.
Bone-achingly cold. A squirrel navigating the tulip tree walks on the undersides of snowy limbs. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.
Bitter cold (-16°C) and still. The rising sun appears in a tiny gap between the trees as if this is all we’re allotted, this bristly thing.
Sunrise and the clouds turn pink as the waning crescent moon turns pale. A squirrel way up in the woods begins its trek to the bird feeder.